The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Actors:
Roger Ashton-Griffiths (actor),
Richard Bohringer (actor),
Arnie Breeveld (actor),
Nick Brozovic (actor),
Michael Clark (actor),
Ron Cook (actor),
Ian Dury (actor),
Alex Fraser (actor),
Michael Gambon (actor),
Tim Geary (actor),
Bob Goody (actor),
Ciarán Hinds (actor),
Alan Howard (actor),
Roger Lloyd Pack (actor),
Tony Alleff (actor),
Plot: The wife of a barbaric crime boss engages in a secretive romance with a gentle bookseller between meals at her husband's restaurant. Food, colour coding, sex, murder, torture and cannibalism are the exotic fare in this beautifully filmed but brutally uncompromising modern fable which has been interpreted as an allegory for Thatcherism.
Keywords: 80s, abstract-art, absurdism, abusive-husband, adultery, alienation, all-seeing-eye, allegory, alternative-reality, anti-hero
Genres:
Crime,
Drama,
Romance,
Taglines: Lust...Murder...Dessert. Bon Appetit!
Quotes:
[In a book depository]::Georgina: Are we safe here?::Michael: Does Albert read?
Georgina: Yes! He's a man. He's Jewish and he's from Ethiopia!::Albert: What?::Georgina: His mother is a Roman Catholic, he's been imprisoned in South Africa, he's as black as the ace of spades and he probably drinks his own pee!
Georgina: Try the cock, Albert. It's a delicacy, and you know where it's been.
Albert: What you've got to realize is that the clever cook puts unlikely things together, like duck and orange, like pineapple and ham. It's called 'artistry'. You know, I am an artist the way I combine my business and my pleasure: Money's my business, eating's my pleasure and Georgie's my pleasure, too, though in a more private kind of way than stuffing the mouth and feeding the sewers, though the pleasures are related because the naughty bits and the dirty bits are so close together that it just goes to show how eating and sex are related. Georgie's naughty bits are nicely related, aren't they, Georgie?
[speaking of Albert, the thief]::Michael: Where is he now?::Georgina: He's eating avocado vinaigrette and prawns... with his fingers.
Albert: Looks like catfood for constipated French rabbits!
Georgina: Bon apetit. It's French...
Albert: What are you doing in there, Georgie? You playin' with yourself? That's not allowed. That's my property, you're not allowed to fiddle with it. Now come on, open the door, I'll show you how to wipe yourself.
Albert: I think those Ethiopians enjoy starving. Keeps them thin and graceful.
Albert: Circumsized mediocrity is screwing my wife!